


you'd make a mess, a terrible mess out of the war

by LadyCharity



Series: there and back again [1]
Category: 1917 (Movie 2019), Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: F/M, Family, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Inter-War Britain, Parent-Child Relationship, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Will Schofield is the father of Tommy from Dunkirk, World War I, it isn't relevant to understanding this story but it is important to me that you know this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:15:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22726750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyCharity/pseuds/LadyCharity
Summary: “I think that it will be a boy,” his wife whispers.Warmth rushes through William's entire being as he imagines building his son a little wooden ark with all sorts of animals to play with, getting to teach his son how to ride a bicycle or to swim now that his daughters have gotten a handle of it on their own. He imagines watching his son grow up.“I like the name Tom,” William says.-Between the two World Wars, William Schofield survives, struggles, and remembers Tom Blake.
Relationships: Joseph Blake & William Schofield, Tom Blake & William Schofield, William Schofield/Original Female Character(s)
Series: there and back again [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1650028
Comments: 44
Kudos: 145





	you'd make a mess, a terrible mess out of the war

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for nearly a week non-stop, and never thought I would do such a thing. I can honestly say I don't know how many, if anyone, would read this. There are a lot of original characters (Will Schofield's family), it's pretty.....long, and Tom Blake appears as a phantom more than anything else. Backstory, but after watching Dunkirk I had a pretty intricate backstory for Tommy (Fionn Whitehead's character), and the gist of it is that he has a father who fought in WWI and two older sisters. I've actually written quite a bit of his backstory for the fun of it, albeit mostly from his sisters' POV (although it takes place mostly post-WWII), and since I got to know them pretty well through writing it their personalities feature quite prominently in this fic despite being side characters. After watching 1917 and noticing that Will Schofield has two daughters already, and his dead best friend's name is Tom, I thought hey.............why not. 
> 
> Thank you so much for giving this story a shot. I am going to be real honest and say that proofreading hasn't happened, but if I don't put it out there now I might go a little mad. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
> 
> Edit: I should also mention that the title is a quote from the novel 'A Separate Peace.'

“Talk to me,” Blake said. “Tell me you know the way.” 

His eyes pleaded William when his breath had given way. William held Blake’s hand tight, but the blood that coated both of them made it difficult to hold on long. 

“Sco,” Blake choked. “You know the way, don’t you?”

William nodded. He knew it, knew that his feet knew it as if they walked that path five hundred years. 

“I’m going to head south,” he said. “Until I hit Ecoust. Through the town and out to…”

He stopped. He was missing something. He was certain that he did. Head south from here, find the town of Ecoust. Was it south, or was it southeast, or was it southwest? Was he looking for woods, or a river? Blake’s face twisted in agony and betrayal.

“Sco, you have to remember,” he wept. “I’m about to die, you have to know the way--” 

“I know it, I know it!” Blake’s blood drenched through William’s uniform, and he felt it both hot and cold against his skin. “Your brother, he looks like you but taller--I mean older--and I need to first go past the bowing man through the wire--”

Blake choked and cried in terror, his grip on William’s hand weakening. 

“No, we’ve done that already,” William stammered. “We’ve got to find Ecoust, it’s not far from here. Just head southeast and--and--”

William startles awake. The quilts and the feathery pillow put him on the edge of his teeth, until he hears his wife’s soft breathing beside him. The weight of time slowly settles into his chest, and he is reminded by the warmth of his wife beside him and the uninterrupted silence of the night that the war has been over for two years. There is no reason for him to pass through Ecoust anymore. 

He does not open his eyes immediately--he tries to recall Blake’s face back into his mind’s eye, because even though Blake is dying in his dream at least he is still there. But sleep has escaped William, and the moment with his friend is gone. 

He opens his eyes. Blue moonlight floats through the bedroom window like mist. He is home. The war is over, and so is Blake. He is home. 

William checks the time on his watch, which he keeps on his wrist even through the night in case he ever needs to bolt out of bed. Three in the morning. His wife, Eloise, had wanted to bring the watch to a tinker to fix the face, which has been shattered and grimy from the war, but he simply is not bothered by it. He has had to wear socks sticky with trench mud for weeks on an end and his hand had gone through maggots. A banged-up watch is the least of his concerns. 

He turns on his side and watches Eloise’s sleeping face, wishing to touch her, to wake her, but he would feel bad if he does. He does not sleep for the rest of the night. 

-

William’s youngest daughter is wearing poppies in her hair. They are weaved into a drooping crown that barely clings onto her dark curls as her sister chases after her alongside the languid River Thames--dark red splotches that trail after her as she lifts her skirt and runs. Her sister stamps upon them as she tries to catch her, so that the soles of her shoes are coated with a layer of flattened poppy petals. 

“Edith, Ginnie!” Eloise calls after them as she lays a picnic blanket under the sapling. “Not so close to the river, darlings.” 

The girls do not pay attention to their mother. Edith, the eldest, shrieks as Ginnie dodges her once more.

“Girls!” Eloise says. “If you fall in the water, you’ll have to stay in your wet clothes for the rest of the afternoon.” 

“Don’t tempt them,” William says. He unwraps a cloth bundle of fruit and lays it out on the blanket, fair-weather berries spilling onto the patchwork quilt. “They’ll use it as an excuse to run starkers all over the meadows.” 

He watches his daughters make-believe as dragons and princesses along the waters, while Ginnie cries out nonsense like _honour!_ and _chivalry_! Edith makes do with dragon growls, which sound more like a yowling cat than a reptile. They have toddling, little legs, but William’s eyes can hardly keep up with them, and soon they cannot keep open to begin with. 

“Are you nodding off?” Eloise says.

William does not open his eyes, but he smiles wryly in response. 

“Incredible, you are,” she says. “I can’t sit still with all the flies all over my face.” 

William can hear her slapping her own cheeks to ward off the insects. If she has more to say, he does not hear it as he weaves in and out of sleep. There is a knot of a tree root pressed against the side of his head, and the coolness of the grass seeps through the thin blanket. In a few minutes, he has better sleep than he has had in months in his wedding bed. 

A sharp cry rips through his thoughtlessness, and he immediately bolts up. His good hand reaches to his side for nothing, while he searches frantically for his daughters. He spots them immediately--Ginnie has slipped in the mud and now her entire skirt is messy. She wails from shame and the cold.

“Girls, what did I tell you?” Eloise says. 

“Edith pushed me!” Ginnie says.

“I did _not_ ,” Edith retorts, naturally.

“Yes you did, You pushed me over and now my dress is--” 

“Virginia, Edith,” William says. “Wash your hands and come over here _now._ ”

His daughters immediately silence. Edith hastens to the family while Ginnie crouches in the riverbank, trying to wipe the mud off her hands.

“Edith,” William says, “What are you doing?”

Edith skids to a stop, blue eyes wide with uncertainty.

“You said to come over,” she says self-righteously.

“Why are you leaving without your sister?” William says. He pushes himself onto his knees, and already he would tower over his daughter. “She could have fallen in when your back’s turned. She could lose her way if she didn’t see where you were going.”

“But we’re right here--”

“I don’t care, Edith. You wait for her and then you come together. You never leave your sister behind, do you understand me?” 

Edith’s bottom lip trembles, but she keeps her lips in a thin line, and even Ginnie has frozen in mid-wash to stare. Edith turns on her heel and flounces back to Ginnie, and although her back is turned towards her parents William can see that her shoulders shake with shame. Eloise puts a firm hand on his wrist. He turns to face her reproachful stare.

“Don’t yell at her for doing what you told her to do,” Eloise says. “She didn’t mean any harm.”

“Of course she didn’t mean harm,” says William. “Accidents happen when you don’t mean for anything.” 

Eloise does not protest, but the look in her dark eyes tells him that she does not agree with him, either. William has learned to accept that; not all of their bridges can meet halfway. 

Edith and Ginnie shuffle back to the picnic blanket side by side. Edith’s eyes are red but dry, and Ginnie has managed to get the mud out from underneath her fingernails. They sit gingerly on the edge of the blanket, and William’s heart is overwhelmed. He picks out several of the plumpest, wine-dark cherries from the pile and holds his full palm out to his daughters.

“These are the sweetest you’ll find,” he says. Edith and Ginnie exchange glances, and he outstretches his hand. “Go on. If they’re not, I’ll tromp around here like an elephant.” 

Ginnie giggles and immediately reaches for one. The gift of youth is a ready and wholly undeserved forgiveness. Edith looks up to William, then to Eloise, before cautiously picking a cherry of her own. 

“What makes them the sweetest?” Ginnie says. 

“They’re lambert cherries,” says William. “They’re the darker of the cherries, which makes them sweeter.” 

“How so?” says Ginnie. “Why? What other cherries are there? How can you tell the difference between them all? How many kinds are there? What else can they taste like?” 

William brushes a curl of her dark hair behind her ear. A wilting poppy falls from her fringe.

“I’m afraid that’s all I know, darling,” he says. “Go on, have a bite.” 

Ginnie and Edith take a bite of their cherry, the fruit giving way beneath the tight, glassy skin. Summer juice dribbles from their lips. 

“What do you think?” he says. “Isn’t it good?”

Ginnie nods emphatically. Edith, on the other hand, chews slowly, sucking the pit from the fruit. When she looks to William, her grave face is only given away by the mischievous glint in her eyes. 

“I’ve had sweeter,” she says. “You’ll have to be an elephant now.”

“You little liar!” William says. 

She grins. Her teeth and her lips are stained a deep red, running down her chin and leaving perfectly round droplets on her dress. William cannot bring it in himself to scold her--rather, it makes him want to hold her tight and never let go. 

Instead, he puts his shoulder close to his face and waves about his arm with a loud, silly braying. 

Edith scarcely disguises her victorious smile. Ginnie howls with delight, and he stomps around them to the beat of their laughter as Eloise watches contently--a moment that he had held onto throughout the war like a memento rather than a future longing. And even as he scraped his knees in the English dirt with his family under the sun, William cannot shake off the feeling that--much like a memento--this current moment has already long passed. 

-

William’s hand could have killed him. It ended up saving him instead. 

When the medics had decided to amputate it, he was consumed with fever, and his doomed hand was swollen with pus and rot. He was delirious with pain, although not quite delirious enough to forget the terror. No whiskey prepared him for it, and by the end of it he was left with a pouch of salt tied to his naked wrist, setting his stump on fire. They soon sent him back home to Britain, and they would not ask him to come back. 

He had written to Eloise to warn her ahead of time, although he was terrified to. There were rumours that other soldiers returned from the front battered, broken, and no longer whole, and their loved ones found that they could no longer tolerate them. But Eloise deserved to know before he walked through the door, that he now had a wooden hand and no idea how he would continue his carpenter work. His children ought to be warned ahead of time, in case he frightened them, in case they would shudder at his touch. 

At least you can still wank, he had thought, as if he were Tom Blake rather than himself. 

But when he had finally returned home, tired and full of dread, Eloise immediately rushed forward and kissed his wooden hand as if it belonged to the king. The girls greeted their father politely, because they were babies at most when he first left for France, their only real memories of him from the snatches of furloughs he had gotten through the years. He held them tight, and fought hard not to cry as he could not feel their hair through his wooden fingers. 

“Does it frighten you?” William said, showing them his hand.

“Yes,” Ginnie whispered. William smiled, even though it stung. 

“It is very unnatural, isn’t it?” he said. “Is it because it doesn’t feel like Papa anymore?” 

Ginnie shook her head. 

“Then what is it?” William said.

“It’s because you’re Captain Hook now,” Ginnie said. “And you’ll stop Peter Pan from visiting us.” 

William stared at his daughter before laughing until he was out of breath. 

The war did not end for another year and a half, and by then all of his closest friends had died or lost their minds. Only acquaintances remained, whom he faintly knew through apprenticeships or from the post office, but when he caught them at the pub, or at the butchers, but mainly at the pub now, he felt a violent and irrevocable closeness to them just by locking eyes with them that even the throngs of marriage had never achieved. Instead of averting their gaze at the sight of his wooden hand, they showed him their wooden foot, or eye socket sewn shut. They joked about bullets in their arse, and raised a glass. 

Calloused as it may be, it kept William’s head above the surface, because there were moments before the troops came back that William felt like a foreigner in his own home, and neighbours he grew up with walked around him as if the past three years had been a nightmare only he had, that no one else could make sense of. Only now, he could feel slightly saner, even if he looked mad for sniggering at a joke about a cat and a truck trapped under mud. 

Eloise’s father offered him work at his pub when his hand rendered carpentry difficult. You can use one hand to pour the lager, the old man said, so long as you can aim well. And you clearly aim well, don’t you, boy? William didn’t know if he was referring to a rifle or to pissing, or both. 

So he runs the pub for now, and helps the old man with his bookkeeping. When he is fortunately kept busy--and truthfully, one is never idle in a pub in Reading--he can almost forget that he feels like a stranger in his own skin, like his entire being had been amputated alongside his hand and it still leaves a phantom ache of what used that used to be. 

You’d find it funny, Blake, William thinks. All the alcohol in the world that I could have washed my old hand in, and I only have got it after it’s been chopped. 

Blake--if he had said any of that--would then chortle to himself before egging William on to give him an extra refill of cider, quick, no one’s looking. William pours too much drink into one patron’s glass that it overflows, and leaves the counter sticky and musky-smelling. 

_It’s called the Lady of the Lake, although its nickname around town is the Watery Wench,_ he writes in a letter to Mrs Blake. _And I think my father-in-law is secretly glad that I’ve lost a hand because now I can give him one during busy nights._

He has written to Mrs Blake ever since the end of the war, every couple of months, at least on Christmas and what he remembers to be Blake’s birthday month, and before the beginning of April. When he writes to her, he primes himself to not expect an answer, because she doesn’t always write back--only once, after Blake died, and it is more than anyone can ask of her. He cannot stop himself anyway, writing politely about the past months whilst keenly aware that he may inadvertently brag about these undeserved riches of life that Blake was not afforded. Perhaps unconsciously trying to fill the gap in her life where a son once was, except it is pointless, because she still has one son, and William is no fit replacement. Blake had not asked William of this, but he did not need to. 

_At least I still have both my ears,_ William continues in his letter. _Tom and I knew a lad who lost an ear. He kept telling everyone that it was from a shrapnel, but Tom--sly fellow--told me all about the perfumed oil. See, what he told me was that the lad had too much of this perfumed oil on his head--_

No, no, no, Blake says in his head. You’re telling it all wrong. You’ve got to start at the very beginning, about his sweetheart. 

William crosses out the lines in the letter and tries again. 

_See, what he told me was that the lad had this sweetheart, who was a--_

Damn, what was she again, Blake? 

But Blake is silent in his memory while William tries to rebuild that long-lost conversation. He remembered where they were, walking through the woods towards the clearing, his hand smarting and stinking and his eyes still gritty with dust. Blake talked on and on and at first William thought it annoying, but it had taken his mind off of the pain for a moment. What was she again, Blake, that she would send perfumed oil? 

_\--the lad had this sweetheart, who was a nice girl_ , he settled for. _And he kept moaning to her about how he can’t keep nice and clean in the trenches, so she sends to him this sweet-smelling oil to keep him happy. But he didn’t want to carry it everywhere, so he puts all of it in his--_

Barnet, Blake insists.

Hair, William argues.

He is about to write hair before he stops himself. After a long pause, he concedes.

_So he puts all of it on his barnet and goes to sleep, and the next thing he knows, he wakes up to a rat going absolutely mad on his face. It’s like honey to them, and they eat his ear straight off thinking it’s a sweet snack!_

William has nearly forgotten it under the overwhelming loss that followed it. Wilco had sworn up and down that a shrapnel sliced it clean off, especially after he realised that William had come off the trenches at the Somme. It certainly explained all the rat jokes Blake had made in Wilco’s direction. 

“Are you still up, love?” Eloise whispers.

He looks up from the kitchen table on which he writes. She is dressed in a nightgown, her hair loose about her shoulders, and she rubs the sleep from her eyes. William takes her hand, running a thumb over the knuckles.

“I’m almost finished,” William says. He looks down at his letter--it is an anecdote he has never shared to Eloise before--he hasn’t shared any anecdote to Eloise before--and for a moment he wants to share it, like some shrewd gossip, because as of right now no one else on the planet knows about the rats’ love for Wilco’s ear except for himself. “Did I ever tell you about this bloke in the Eighth named Wilco?” 

He tells the whole story to Eloise, trying to match the light cadences that Blake once used. When he reaches the part about the rats running off into No Man’s Land with Wilco’s syrupy ear, he laughs before he can even finish it. Eloise, on the other hand, claps her hand over her mouth.

“That poor man,” she says. “A rat, biting a man’s ear clean off? That must have been awful.”

“Embarrassing as hell is more like it,” William says. “You know the man told me it was a shrapnel wound since the first day?” 

“Sorry,” Eloise says, shuddering. “I’m still thinking about the rats.”

She hadn’t laughed once, not even cracked a smile, so when she kisses William on the head and returns to bed, he scrounges for a clean sheet of paper and starts over. Now, he doesn’t know what else to say. 

-

William walked along the edge of the river because he swore that there was a bridge. Behind him, the long line of trucks had parked, rumbling with a battalion that was not his own. He could see the remains of Ecoust on the other side of the river, but it was still so far away, and not even a half-fallen log was visible for him to cross through.

He couldn’t swim it. His pack was too heavy, and he would sink in an instant. He turned to the soldiers that had helped him earlier, but their truck had already trudged away, in search of a new route. He was on his own. 

He had to swim it. 

Without giving himself a chance to be afraid, William dived into the water. He found that he could breathe underwater, as dreams often lent him, but under the river was far more vast and complicated than he remembered, and he feared losing direction. He thought that perhaps if he kept swimming in the river, he could go round Ecoust and find Croisilles Woods from there. He knew that he had never attempted it, but it made sense to him now. 

But as he poked his head out of the water the scenery had changed immensely. Instead of the church tower that he had kept his eye on earlier, above the canal was lines and lines of muddy, grotesque trenches. The water was full of maggots and bloated rats, and he knew in his gut that if he climbed out of the canal he would see something even more horrifying, even if he did not know what it was. 

“Ecoust!” he cried out. A soldier with half his face blown off turned to him. “Where is Ecoust?” 

“The fuck are you talking about?” the soldier said. “We’re the Yorks. We aren’t stationed anywhere near Ecoust.” 

When the dread that he had somehow gone in a circle, and ended up back at the beginning of his journey, struck his chest, William shakes awake. 

It’s over, he tells himself as he rubs his chest under which his heart hammers. It’s over, it’s all over now. You’ve finished it already. It’s done. 

He tries to run his hand over his face, but his fingers flop clumsily over his nose. He realises that his hand feels numb, and panic sends him sitting straight up, crying out. The moment he sits up, his arm tingles like hell, as blood rushes back into his hand, reminding him that it is healthy by the way that it hurts. He had been sleeping on it. 

“What’s the matter?” Eloise whispers. 

William swallows hard. He flexes his hand, and relishes the feeling of his fingers obeying him. Eloise puts a hand on the small of his back.

“Nothing,” he says. “Sorry. Go back to sleep.”

“Can’t sleep anyway,” Eloise grumbles. She turns to face him. “Did you have a bad dream?” 

“I slept on my hand,” William says. 

Eloise reaches over to massage it. It sends more shocks down to his elbow. He lies back down, his heart still thundering as if the three years between the trenches and now passed in a millisecond. He checks the time on his watch, which he keeps tightened around the stump of his left arm. It is difficult to make out the time under its fogged glass. 

She takes his good hand and lays it across her belly, the soft paunch and the fold of her belly button. Her skin is warm, dry under his trembling, balmy palm, and she holds it there until he could feel again with his fingers. Only then does he realise that there is something unusually firm under her soft flesh. He turns his head to her and she smiles coyly.

“What?” he says.

She raises her eyebrows.

“You think so?” he says. His heart skips a beat. “You’re not bluffing?” 

“I should have been bleeding two weeks ago,” she says. “And I’m not getting any thinner, that’s for sure.” 

A hot tingle runs through William’s back, as if all life’s blood is rushing back into his entire body. Perhaps it is silly, but it is a revelation of sorts. After being so deeply embedded in death, he still somehow has enough life in him to pass it forward. 

“You’re not lying?” he says. “This isn’t a dream?” 

“I wanted to wait a little longer to tell you,” she says, “but I can’t help myself.”

“You wonderful girl!” he says. “You’ve been working hard, haven’t you?”

Eloise laughs. She is right before him, and yet William is full of missing. The shock between his dream (which was and is and feels so real) and reality (which feels and seems too good to be true) makes him dizzy, as if he is in someone else’s body and bears someone else’s name. William Schofield has swum through a dam of dead bodies to reach the Croisilles Woods. William Schofield will be a father of three little ones. Somehow, both are true, and there is no reason to pass through Ecoust anymore. 

“Do you think it was from the time we couldn’t get the furnace hot enough, or when your father left us alone at the Lady of the Lake after closing?” he says.

Eloise snorts, and he grins. 

“Looks like you’ll finally be able to drink me under the table,” she says. “For now, anyway.” 

“Bugger off. You’ve had family practise,” says William. “Ginnie will be pleased. She can finally leave the Petersons’ babies alone now that she’ll have her own little one.” 

“She still has several months before that,” Eloise says. 

“I still quite like the name Violet. Or Lily.” 

“You think that it will be a girl?”

“I’m only saying I like those names.”

“I think that it will be a boy.” 

William looks deep into Eloise’s eyes. She brushes his hair from his forehead. 

“Do you really?” he says.

“Mother’s intuition,” she says. “This time feels differently from the girls.” 

“Are you sure you’re remembering right? It has been five years.” 

“Typical men, thinking we could forget something like that.”

William smiles. Warmth rushes through his entire being as he imagines building his son a little wooden ark with all sorts of animals to play with, getting to teach his son how to ride a bicycle or to swim now that his daughters have gotten a handle of it on their own. He imagines watching his son grow up. 

“I like the name Tom,” William says. 

He waits for her to protest. Her father’s name is Charles, and she had nearly named Ginnie Charlotte. He does not think that he will push too much when she does, because she would be right in doing so. But he cannot help himself. 

She nestles her head deeper into the pillow.

“Tommy,” she says softly. “That’s a sweet little name for a boy, isn’t it? Tommy.” 

For a moment, William has never felt more loved until now. 

-

The truth is that William misses his absent hand so much he wants to rip off his wooden hand and throw it into the River Thames and scream.

He misses building with his hands, pressing his fingers against the grain of the wood as he saws it into precise shapes. He misses helping Eloise lift a heavy box onto the top shelf. He misses tossing his girls into the air and knowing that he would be able to catch them before they land. He misses scratching his left buttock without having to think about it. 

But there is a tenderness to it. Ginnie has promoted herself to be her father’s left hand, and tails after him around the pub. She stands on a stool and holds the glass while he pours beer into it, and insists that she be the one to pass the patrons their drinks. Helping William around the pub makes her feel more grown-up, because she still has to wait another couple of months to be an older sister.

“Papa, Mr Wheeler would like a scotch!” she declares from her stool-top, jingling the coins of payment in her palm. 

“Get me one of them short glasses, Ginnie,” William says. 

She bends down to the counter to pick out a clean glass as William hooks his fingers around the neck of the scotch and the soda. He sets it on the counter and turns to Ginnie, who nods expectantly.

“And how does Mr Wheeler like his scotch again?” William says.

“Half and half,” she says confidently. “Exactly!” 

She holds the glass down with both little hands as if it will fly away if she isn’t careful. William measures out the scotch and soda in equal measure, pretending to heed Ginnie’s instructions to stop and go when she announces it a little too early. When he finishes the drink, Ginnie proudly holds it out to Wheeler, who tweaks her nose as gratuity. 

“I want to make the next one,” she says. Her dark brown eyes are wide with the currency that youngest daughters know best. “Please? I know how to pour the beer, and the lager. Let me try next time, oh, please--” 

“Oh, my darling,” William says, “You’re too clever. Why don’t you go check with Mum if she needs any help first?” 

Ginnie huffs, but she obligingly climbs up the stairs to the flat above the pub into which they now live. Wheeler, who is not much older than William but looks it now that his hair has gone all grey, chuckles at her retreating back.

“She’s going to take your job from you, mate,” says Wheeler. “She’s following your footsteps now, no doubt she’ll overtake you soon.”

“I would have rather taught her how to build a cabinet,” William says wistfully. 

“How old?” asks Wheeler. 

“Five years old.”

Wheeler gives a low whistle.

“A parting gift, wasn’t she?” he says. 

“Bugger off,” William says. Then, “Maybe.” 

Wheeler snorts and drinks his scotch. William runs a dirty glass under the tap, musing. He still finds himself flummoxed by Ginnie’s existence, in a way that is different from his eldest. He sometimes still expects Ginnie to be in her mother’s belly, and now she chatters endlessly and helps him serve drinks. 

Ginnie stomps down the steps loudly, as if to make her presence known. 

“Mum says she’s too tired to keep up with me,” she says proudly. 

“Well, Mum works hard, I suppose,” William says. He manages to lift her up with one arm and places her to sit on a barstool. “Once Edith comes back from school, you won’t be as bored.”

“I’m not bored,” Ginnie says. “I want to make a highball. Oh, it’s Mr Tatlock again!” 

William turns to see Tatlock standing by the bar, a patron who served in the 184th Brigade. His fingers twitch constantly, and he doesn’t meet anyone’s eye even when he looks at them. When he walks, his limbs twist, as if he is a poorly directed doll that a child drags around. 

“George,” William says. “I think you’ve had quite enough already today.” 

“Fuck off, Schofield,” Tatlock stammers. 

“Only I get to curse in front of my child,” William says warningly. “Come on, George. You’ve been here since morning.” 

Tatlock shakes his head. His entire being oozes of alcohol, a clumsy attempt to mask the frantic reflexes that he has never shaken off since France. There is still a ghost of a twitch in his face, albeit much less pronounced than it had been when he first returned home. Rumour has it that he had stabbed a young German in the face with a bayonet, and hasn’t been able to keep his face still since. 

“I’m paying you, aren’t I?” he says. He pushes a crown to William. His knobby fingers hardly have a hold of the coin. “Now give me a drink. I need this.” 

“Ain’t your wife going to worry?” Wheeler says. “Let’s get going, Tatlock, that’s enough now--” 

“Fuck off, the both of you!” Tatlock says. The louder he speaks, the more pronounced the tremor in his voice. Every taut nerve in his system is a tripwire. “I’ll go to the Dirty Duck then if you lot aren’t going to stuff it.” 

“All right, you bleeding idiot,” Wheeler says. “Don’t be a fool, I’m taking you back.” 

He grabs Tatlock by the shoulder and pulls him forward. William sees Wheeler’s mistake, but it is too late. Wheeler’s hand comes too close to Tatlock’s neck, and before any of them can react, Tatlock’s fist comes flying down Wheeler’s face, knocking the man to the ground. 

Ginnie screams, but Tatlock screams louder. The man is shouting at Wheeler, who cradles a bloody nose, and Tatlock would throw himself into a fight if William hasn’t jumped over the counter and thrown himself in between the two. The other patrons of the pub have jumped to their feet as Tatlock shouts and spits, and William’s one hand can only hold him back so much.

“George!” William bellows. “George, that’s enough!” 

Two other patrons help William pull Tatlock away, while Wheeler stumbles onto his feet, cupping his bleeding nose. Tatlock thrashes in their grip, and the twitch in his face makes it looks like maggots have crawled under his skin and begun a frenzy. The thought makes William jump back instinctively. He turns his head and sees with a twist in his stomach Ginnie staring, absolutely frozen. 

After a moment, or perhaps too long, Tatlock dissolves into moans and whimpers, sagging in the arms of those holding him back, and the soldier in him dies away. Wheeler mops his face with a rag, shrugging stubbornly when asked if he is all right. William holds his hand out to Ginnie, who is rooted on the barstool as if it is the only safe place.

“Come on, darling,” William urges. “Go on upstairs.” 

Ginnie looks up to him with wide, frantic eyes, as if he is the one who shouted and fought, before nervously following him back to the flat. William grips her little hand tightly.

“Why did he do that, Papa?” Ginnie whispers when he shuffles her upstairs. 

William does not know what to say. He crouches in front of Ginnie, so that he looks her in the eye. 

“Mr Tatlock was frightened,” he says. He pauses. “I don’t think even Mr Tatlock knows why he did it, either.” 

Ginnie’s gaze darts over William’s shoulder, towards the door that separates their home from the pub. 

“Mrs Peterson says that he is a coward,” Ginnie says. 

A biting bitterness towards their neighbour grips William. He thinks of his fellow soldiers shivering in the dirt, unable to hear or move at the sound of bombardment, or the ones who fled from the charge forward, sick excrement running freely from their trousers no matter how much they tried to stop it. Go and hide yourself, you bloody coward! fellow soldiers snapped at them as they ran, and William remembers the early days when his voice was among them. 

“Mrs Peterson is wrong,” he says. “You hear me, Ginnie? People choose to be cowards. Mr Tatlock can’t help this.” He cups her face; one thumb smooths her cheek, the other keeps still. “Did that scare you?” 

Ginnie nods. William tries not to count down the days until he might frighten her in the exact same way. He has no reason to trust himself that he won’t. 

“Papa still has to help Granddad work,” he says, “but let’s ask Mama to read to you. Would you like that?” 

“Papa,” says Ginnie. 

“Yes, love?”

“Please may I try making someone a scotch instead?” 

William pauses, torn between laughing and groaning. In the back of his mind he wonders if he is unintentionally setting the building blocks of making his daughter as strong of a drinker as her mother. 

“You can make me a scotch after dinner,” he says. “How about that?” 

She smiles, and he can convince himself that she has nearly forgotten the incident below. 

“All right,” she says.

He ushers her to Eloise, who takes Ginnie and urges her little daughter to talk to the baby in her tummy, which delights Ginnie immediately. William returns to the pub to work. By the time he comes down the stairs, Tatlock is gone, and everyone is drinking as if nothing has happened. 

-

When Tommy is born, his birth is difficult. Eloise drenches the sheets with blood, her nightgown stinks with that familiar metallic, and her screams make it hard for William to breathe. This is not his first time witnessing his child’s birth, but this time, he trembles uncontrollably beside the door and weeps until the doctor calms him. 

He is afraid to hold his son. His wooden hand does not have the same gentle instinct. Hands that have strangled the life out of another person should not touch a baby. But he sits down at Eloise’s bedside as she recovers and cradles Tommy, and his heart nearly bursts. 

“Well done, Eloise,” William says with hushed reverence. 

“Oh, shut up,” Eloise says sleepily. 

William traces Tommy’s pearly ear. He was not present for Ginnie’s birth, and Edith’s days as a baby seem a lifetime away. Tommy turns the universe upside-down by simply existing, all joy and awe in such a small bundle. 

“Hello, little one,” he murmurs. His eyes grow hot. “Hello, Tommy.” 

Tommy yowls for air with healthy, greedy lungs. He screams with such ferocity that would have made a certain Thomas Blake proud. 

“It’s your papa,” William says. “I’m here. I’ll be right here, always.”

Little Tommy takes the promise for granted, and sleeps with his small hand gripping William’s little finger, all the while William is entirely wrapped around his. 

When it is time for Tommy to meet his sisters, Edith has already sewn a clumsy bonnet for him (with much guidance from her nan, presumably), and Ginnie whinges until it is her turn to hold the baby. 

“--Eighteen--nineteen--twenty!” Ginnie says. “All right, that’s twenty seconds, now it’s my turn!” 

“Mummy says I could have a _minute_ ,” Edith says, glaring at Ginnie over the swaddled baby in her weedy arms. “A minute is _sixty_ seconds.” 

“You’ve already had at least a hundred seconds before we started counting!” 

“Girls, please,” Eloise says, her eyes half-closed with exhaustion. “Mummy’s going to go mental if you don’t be good.” 

William watches the girls curl up on either side of Eloise while Tommy is tucked away safely in their mother’s arms, and he marvels at how he has done nothing to deserve this.

 _I reckon that the trees are starting to flower this time of the year_ , William writes in a letter. _Springtime brings a great deal of sweetness, apples, apricots, and little fawns that gobble the first two up_. 

His handwriting has gotten neater, finally, but he doubts that it will improve his chances of Mrs Blake returning his correspondence. He hopes that these letters go to _someone_ at least, but he doesn’t think he will ever know for sure. 

_I don’t see many flowering fruit trees here in Reading,_ he writes. _A couple of rogue apple trees here and there, but they wouldn’t be mine to pick. I wish there were more, they are beautiful and a shame that they flower in such a short time before they all fall out, even if it does mean that fruit is on its way._

He stops halfway, and considers for a long time if he should mention his son. It is already April, which means that the days could sting. For civilians, the day of death of their loved ones is like a grenade embedded in the open field of a year, set to go off and tear a hole through their chest on that innocuous date. For William, it might as well be an advent calendar. 

Would she take offense, that he has taken the name of her youngest son to give to his own? He had not asked permission, and frankly would not have needed to, but he feels an uncomfortable guilt nonetheless. His friend, and Mrs Blake’s son, is dead, and here he is, flaunting his life and future. 

Beside him, Tommy gurgles in his crib. William wipes the ink off of his hand and tickles Tommy’s nose. He does not want to imagine how it must feel like to be Blake’s mother, but he does anyway, and his heart clenches. He had hoped that he had comforted Mrs Blake by telling her that Blake’s death was very quick, and that he was brave to the end. Really, it would hardly sting less. 

“Is it already time for you to eat?” he whispers to Tommy.

Tommy does not fuss, only blinks blearily at William with cloudy blue eyes. William rests his head against the crib railing--his own creation for when Edith had been born, and he is still proud of its sturdiness. Tommy’s face is still squashed from childbirth, but William can tell that his lips look like his sisters’. 

“Let’s give your mother a couple more minutes of sleep, how about?” William says. 

He cups Tommy’s fragile scalp with his hand. He decides, then and there, that he will not mention his son in his letter, because Mrs Blake does not owe it to him to care. She has never expressed a note of bitterness to William, but he can still imagine it. You got to have everything, he could hear her lash out, and my Tom got nothing. You got to have a life, a family, a future, and now you get to have my son too. 

I don’t have your son, though, he thinks. None of us do. Blake’s gone, and Tommy is his own. He’s mine, but he is his own. 

“ _The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat,_ ” William recites. “ _They took some honey, and plenty of money, wrapped up in a five-pound note..._ ” 

He sings the poem under his breath for just Tommy to hear, the nursery rhyme clumsy in his mouth. Tommy listens, transfixed, or perhaps he is simply trying to process the coloured blobs in his world. In this moment, his father is his world, and in a flash--however brief and undeserved--William does not feel guilty for surviving. 

-

Tommy shares Thomas Blake’s name and that is where similarity ends. He has Eloise’s dark wavy hair and indelicate, freckled nose, and he has William’s pale eyes. With each passing day he reveals another mystery that is himself, like a flower that slowly unfurls its full bloom. He toddles adoringly after his sisters; Ginnie is delighted to have an audience hang on her every word as she reads from her favourite stories, and Edith has adopted her parents’ habit of calling the boy ‘darling’ and ‘little one’ at the ripe old age of seven. 

He has a sharp mind, quick to remember songs and clever to come up with his own on the spot, but only his sisters are privy to that because large crowds clam him up immediately. He rereads the stories of Peter Pan and Peter Rabbit until he wears down the library’s collection of children’s books, and whenever the Schofields have guests to entertain, he hides himself in his sisters’ wardrobe and reads by torchlight until someone drags him out. 

“Just five more minutes?” he whispers when William throws open the wardrobe doors. His knees are drawn to his chest, and a story of flying children perched on his knees. “Please? I’ll be right down, Papa, please?” 

His parents often find him sleeping underneath the bed, because that is where he keeps the books. Eloise gently pulls him out from underneath and tucks him into bed, while William runs his hand up and down his other arm, suddenly full of jittery nerves. 

“The boy needs a bookshelf,” he says. 

“Maybe my parents have an old one they can give him,” Eloise says.

“No,” William says. “I want to build him one.”

Eloise turns to look William in the eye. His hand hovers ashamedly over his wooden hand, the hollow replacement. 

“Just tell me what to do,” she says.

He teaches her the different grains of wood, how to calculate exact measurements and join the pieces together. She holds down the lumber as he saws, and he nods in encouragement when she fits the shelves precisely. He can feel the sawdust and splinters in her fingers as if they are his own. Eloise paints galaxies onto the little bookshelf, which is just big enough for a child, silvery stars peppering the swirling nighttime. When Tommy lays his eyes on it, the gasp he makes is enough to make William feel higher than the planets. 

Which is sorely needed, because everything else in the world is intent on crushing him. As the years go by, the alleged peace that the Great War had meant to bring has still yet to rear its phantom head. Riots break out across the isle, money runs short, and people without work or help become desperate. William reads all over the news about street gangs and robberies and strikes seizing factories and he is exhausted before his day begins. He has already long suspected that he had fought for nearly nothing in France, and time’s arrow progressively confirms it. 

He takes heart in his little world’s victories. Edith excels in her studies and takes local typing classes. She double-checks William’s maths at the pub and flocks to the cinema frequently. William dares to dream that he can send her to the nearby all girls’ university; when the economy crash dashes said dreams, she bribes boys with her thick, dark lashes and clever laugh to lend her their notebooks. Ginnie dominates her schoolmates with her boisterous command and relentless determination, taking on dares and making a competition out of any mundane activity. She has led her classmates on protests against one teacher for reprimanding a student for dirt on her fingernails. 

It is Tommy who worries William. He still trembles in crowds even though he has started school. Any child could know that Tommy is generous and pensive, likes to play football with others so long as he has at least two hours to himself to read, but few get to that point. In a time of machines bellowing smoke and bad news traveling fast, William recognises bleakly the softness of his sensitive son, and that he is not as young as he used to be to shield him. 

“You ought to play with the boys in your class, Tommy,” William says over dinner of watery egg and potato soup. “You can’t spend all of your time with your sister.” 

“But Ginnie was telling me the story from the jungle,” Tommy says, his pale eyes wide with wonder. “About the mongoose, and the snake, and I couldn’t stop listening until they called us into class and--”

“He cried over the snake,” Ginnie says from the corner of her mouth to Edith, who pokes her hard in the side. Tommy blushes furiously. 

“It isn’t fair,” he says earnestly. “All of the animals hated the snake simply for doing what snakes do, and trying to take care of her family. They made her seem so evil, but she’s scared and hungry too!” 

“Because she’s a _snake_ , you dolt,” Ginnie says. “She was going to kill the humans.”

“But she hadn’t--and she was trying to protect her eggs!” Tommy says, his voice ringing with indignation. “They’re just trying to protect their family and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi kills them and everyone celebrates like it’s a good thing when he just does the same thing they would hate the snakes for but _to_ the snakes, and--”

His eyes already glisten with bleeding sympathy for the misunderstood, villainous vipers. Ginnie, on the other hand, scoffs. 

“You’d be crying this much too if the snakes killed the little boy and got what they wanted,” she says.

Tommy doesn’t protest because it is true. He casts a pleading glance at Eloise and William, but William does not say anything. It has been too long since he has read the story himself. But he thinks of the way compassion has killed people, and even though Tommy is just a child it makes him go quiet. 

To make matters worse, when Tommy is ten years old and returns home from school, his clothes are dirty and there are sticks and mud in his hair. 

“I clobbered those boys when I found them,” Ginnie says grimly, herself rumpled but otherwise proud. Her curls are all undone, although significantly lacking mud compared to her brother. Tommy, on the other hand, keeps his eyes locked on the floor. “Prats, the lot of them.”

“How long has this been going on?” William says. Tommy pointedly fixes his gaze elsewhere. “Tommy, how long have they been bullying you?” 

Tommy mumbles an incoherent answer. 

“Thomas Blake, you speak up when your father asks you something.” 

“Since Mr Wickham read my story out loud in class,” Tommy says, his ears reddening. “They make fun of me for it.” 

Eloise fusses over the mud drying on his face, but William holds her back. 

“What story?” William says. 

Tommy’s lips tighten into a thin line. 

“It’s nothing,” he says. “I just--I was so upset about the mongoose story that I--I wrote an alternative ending. And Mr Wickham read it and shared it with everyone and now everyone thinks I’m silly.” 

Not silly, William thinks grimly. Soft. They see your plush, pitying heart and think it is all the more amusing to puncture it.

“Why don’t you stop them?” William says. 

Tommy looks up indignantly.

“I tell them to leave me alone,” he says, “but they won’t listen.”

“They will never listen, Tommy,” says William. “And Ginnie will finish school soon. She won’t be able to look out for you. You need to know how to stand against them.”

Eloise’s nails dig deep into William’s elbow, but he doesn’t flinch. Tommy’s eyes widen. 

“But I don’t want to fight,” Tommy says. “I don’t like it.”

“It doesn’t matter if you don’t like it,” William says urgently. “They’re going to fight you anyway. And then what will you do? Let them break your nose?” 

“Will, that’s enough,” Eloise says in a low voice. Tommy’s eyes begin to water, which makes William even more anxious. 

“It’s because you girls do nothing but baby him,” he accuses. “Tommy, you’re the one who should be looking after Ginnie and she’s the one picking fights for you.”

Ginnie looks scandalised and Eloise’s face is perfectly stony. 

“I can look after myself just fine, I’m older!” Ginnie says. 

“That doesn’t matter!” William says. “They don’t send the old to the front line, they send boys.” 

“Ginnie,” Eloise says loudly. “Go and help Tommy get cleaned up before dinner.” 

Ginnie elbows Tommy and ushers him to the washing room. Tommy avoids William’s eyes as he passes. It makes William’s stomach turn uncomfortably, but he knows that it is for the best. There is too much going on in the world right now, too much uncertainty and roughness, and his son is too tender to make it out alive. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” he says when Eloise glares at him. 

“Well done,” she says. “You’ve gone and crushed him.” 

“If all it takes is that to crush him, then we have an even bigger problem,” says William. 

“Don’t pretend you don’t remember how it felt when your father belittled you,” Eloise says. William avoids her gaze. “You know it’s not nothing.” 

“You know that he needs to learn,” William mutters. 

“I’d rather my son not get into schoolyard brawls,” she says.

“He’s a boy. He will get into brawls in the school, in the field, in the pub, in the bloody Somme. He will get into them whether you like it or not. So do you want him to get out of it with the upper hand or beaten to a pulp?” 

Eloise opens her mouth, then closes it, but her jaw shakes. She wants to keep her son’s mellow spirit, and so does William, but William wants to keep his son alive even more. No man from his generation has made it this far by being gentle. 

“There isn’t going to be another war, Will,” Eloise says quietly. 

William shakes his head. The rest of him shakes as well. He doesn’t know why. 

“You don’t know if there might,” he says. 

Eloise’s face softens. She takes his face in her hands and rests his forehead against hers. She doesn’t say anything, or try to change his mind, simply stands there and breathes and lets him feel like the past hasn’t overtaken him. 

“Don’t send him to war just yet, then,” she says. “Let him have peacetime, or he’ll never come back even if he would survive.” 

For a wild moment he thinks she may not be talking about Tommy anymore. He grips her wrist, trying to find the words he wants to say to her but can only pass his emotions through this moment of touch. He can’t help but dread that she is disappointed in him--can’t help but think, so easily that it is like breath prayer, that if he had died in the fields then he wouldn’t be such a disappointment. 

Dinner passes stiffly, and Edith--who has only just come home from typing class--is bewildered by everyone’s awkward silence. William knows he should say something to Tommy, except that he does not feel sorry. He does not feel righteous, either. 

He closes the pub early that night. The family ought to be in bed by now, but as usual they are not, and that uncomfortable tension has settled into permissible silence. Tommy is in his bedroom reading, probably, while the girls gossip by the radio. William places his wooden hand and watch on the bedroom nightstand before he washes up for the night, but when he returns to put the watch back on, he finds it missing. 

He looks underneath the table and bed, wondering if he has knocked it over at some point. Only a bit of undisturbed dust greets him. He sighs exasperatedly before he checks the pocket of his trousers. The jingle of metal in the trousers lifts his spirits until he realises it is only a couple of coins knocking about. 

Mild annoyance ripens to concern as he checks the washroom, even back down at the pub in case he hasn’t remembered correctly, and he took it off somewhere beforehand. His arm is beginning to feel increasingly vulnerable, as if being without a hand isn’t bad enough already. He is never without the watch that he had worn since the beginning of the war, so much that his skin is perpetually indented by its strap. 

“Eloise?” he says when he returns to the bedroom. “Have you seen my watch?” 

Eloise pauses in the middle of changing into her nightgown. 

“No, I haven’t,” she says. “Where had you put it?”

“I thought I put it right here,” he says, gesturing to his prosthetic. 

“It wasn’t there when I walked in.” 

Concern festers into anxiety. He runs his hand over his stump and the indentation of his skin. He goes to the living room, where his daughters are listening to a drama from the BBC. 

“Have you girls seen my watch?” he says. 

“Not since you’ve been wearing it,” Edith says. Ginnie shakes her head. 

“You’re certain?” William says. “When was the last time you all saw it, do you remember?”

“You were wearing it during dinner, weren’t you?” says Edith. 

“Was I wearing it when I came back up from the pub?” 

“Blimey, we weren’t paying attention,” says Ginnie. “I would think so, why would you take it off at the pub? You never take it off.” 

William would have passed over Tommy if his bedroom door isn't slightly ajar, indicating that he hasn’t slept yet. Still, it takes a great deal of effort, because he doubts that he is in his son’s good graces right now, but he doesn’t know where his watch is and he can’t explain to even himself why this upsets him. 

“Tommy?” he says, knocking on the door. Tommy is curled up on his bed, his nose buried in stories about King Arthur. “You haven’t seen my watch, have you?” 

Tommy shakes his head. He has gotten that book only yesterday afternoon and is already nearly finished with it. William doubts that he has done anything else but read since dinner ended. 

“All right,” William says. He rubs his stump protectively, as if gripping it tight could suffice. He knows he can tell the time any other way, wrap a band around his arm and fill in the empty space. But that wouldn’t help. “I--all right. Good night.”

He turns to leave, then looks back at his son. Tommy’s back is stiff against the wall, and he inhales stories of dragons and knights until he practically glows with its magic. He loves this boy so much that he has to squash that spark, if it means he would last longer, and it grieves him because he doesn’t know what else to do.

He crawls on the bedroom floor in search for his old watch, only able to prop himself up with his elbows since his stump isn’t exactly stable. Eloise searches the sheets in case they have gotten lost on the bed, but to no avail. William doesn’t want to explain to her everything, so he keeps his head to the ground so that she doesn’t see the sweat building up on his brow. 

You’re home, Will, he thinks to himself. So what if the watch isn’t? _You_ are. That’s what is important, isn’t it? 

But for how long, asks the small voice in his head. How do you know for sure? 

He slouches against the bed, his elbows smarting and his heart beating frustratingly hard. Eloise murmurs that she will ask the girls again and leaves the room. A beat after she walks through the door, there is a knock. 

Tommy stands at the doorway, his eyes downcast. He quietly closes the door behind him and kneels next to William. When William looks at him, Tommy swallows audibly.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I was being so stupid.” 

He holds out his hand. William looks down and feels as if clean, cold water has swept him clean of himself. In Tommy’s hand is his ugly, decrepit watch with the cracked grimy face and his initials along the band. 

“I was so angry at you,” Tommy stammers. He can’t bring himself to look at William’s face. “And I felt rotten and I wanted you to feel rotten too so I took it when you were washing and--But I know I was being bad and you asked me if I saw it and I lied but--” 

Tommy hiccups, his thin face drawn with guilt. William says nothing, only stares at his youngest child whose conscience is so sensitive that it can’t commit to an act of vengeance for more than half an hour. Before William can say anything, Tommy hastily slips the watch over William’s stump. He adjusts the threadbare strap so that it fits snugly on William’s arm, his fingers trembling with emotion, and William can only watch. 

If I die, William had told Blake, please could you send my wristwatch back to my family?

Blake had not responded immediately to William’s request, only blinking in surprise at first. He had not gone through the Somme--he had not thought before that this was something that he needed to consider.

Your watch? he had said.

Yes, William said. He ran his finger around the glass protectively. It’s an old family thing. And they wouldn’t be able to have a grave if I go. Promise me that, Blake, won’t you?

Of course, Blake said earnestly. Of course, but you won’t have to worry about that, Sco. You’ll be all right.

He faltered at the look on William’s face. He didn’t want to think about his friend’s death, but felt the weight of such a request and all the tender trust that came with it, and wanted to return the favour.

Then, said Blake, if _I_ go, send my family my rings. See these ones here? They were my granddad’s. They’re gold, so don’t you go stealing them, Sco. 

“Are you angry with me?” Tommy asks. 

The war is over, and so is Blake. Williams draws himself back to the present, to look his own Tommy in the eyes. Tommy’s face is grave, and he sits incredibly still, as if he is embarrassed to take up space.

“No,” William says truthfully. His voice lodges in his throat. “No, I’m not. But you had scared me, Tommy, and I wish you hadn’t done that.”

He clasps his hand over the wristwatch. The mud on the leather is nearly fifteen years old. The war is over, but the stain it leaves on time is not one that can be wiped away easily.

“Are you ashamed of me?” Tommy asks. 

William takes Tommy’s wrist in his hand, holds it uncertainly. He runs his thumb over the fine bone, and considers his son who would undoubtedly run to the aid of an enemy fighter pilot, only to be stabbed in return. 

“No,” William says, just as honest as the first. “I’m only scared for you.”

“Because I’m weak,” Tommy murmurs.

“Not because you’re weak,” William says. “Because you’re very strong. And I’m scared, because your strength is the kind that people will hurt you for it.”

Tommy does not say anything. He sits quietly, slowly taking in William’s words. William is overwhelmed with the need to protect his children from everything. He knows better than to assume that he can. 

“Is that why you lost your hand?” Tommy asks tentatively.

William sighs. He brushes his hand through Tommy’s dark hair. 

“No,” he says. “It is not.”

-

_Dear Mrs Blake,_

_I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left him. I shouldn’t have turned around, shouldn’t have left his side. He saved my life. I couldn’t save his. I’m sorry. I know there is nothing I can do. I’m sorry. He was a good man, and that was what killed him. Are the ones who are left the rotten ones? Am I alive because I am rotten, because I would have shot the pilot in the head, because I killed in order to stay alive, and Tom tried to help others live and was killed for it? I should have brought back more than his rings. I should have brought back your son. I should have--_

He never writes this letter. His hand cramps too much to try.

-

William and the men of his generation have survived surviving the war for sixteen years. For some, however, surviving ends up killing them, albeit slowly. 

George Tatlock’s anger never goes away. He disappears for days at a time and reappears with a hangover and a vendetta against the entire city of Reading. He has on multiple occasions shouted at the vicar in the middle of the church, whom he swears up and down has betrayed him for inspiring him to enlist in the war. He buries himself in alcohol, and has avoided the Lady of the Lake now that William refuses to give him anything past two drinks. There are rumours that Tatlock is involved in underground boxing rings, and that he has killed a boy there, but whether or not those rumours are true don’t change the fact that many people in Reading avoid him, which only increases his bitterness and isolation. 

“My nan says he was a coward during the war,” one of the Peterson boys says to the Schofield children, eyeing Tatlock warily as the man trudges down the main street, stopping to speak to no one. William is cleaning the windows of the pub while the children are playing on the streets. “And now he’s a nuisance.” 

“You shut your mouth,” Ginnie says waspishly.

“Don’t act like you don’t think so,” the Peterson boy says. “You’re scared of him too.”

Ginnie purses her lips, but she does not contradict. William cannot blame her. Tommy shakes his head stubbornly.

“He can’t help it, Edmund,” he says. “Don’t say such mean things.” 

“Doesn’t matter if I do or don’t,” the Peterson boy says with a shrug. “Doesn’t make it less true.” 

“Go away, Edmund,” Ginnie says. 

The Peterson boy obliges. Ginnie says some colourful vocabulary under her breath. 

“If Dad wasn’t standing here I’d have hit him,” William can hear her say.

“Edmund can’t help being stupid either,” Tommy says with a sigh. “His nan says some terrible things and he doesn’t know any better. How’s hitting him going to change that?” 

He says something even quieter to Ginnie. Ginnie exclaims with surprise, but after some back and forth, she relents. The two of them cross the street. William sets down his rag and bucket of soap water to watch Ginnie and Tommy dodge cars to the other side, towards the stumbling Tatlock. 

Ginnie calls after Tatlock, who needs a couple of tries before he hears them. He stares at them as Tommy stutters something to them, his social anxiety still having a hold of him. William holds his breath as Tommy finishes, and they all stare at Tatlock for a response. Passerbys also gape at them, surprised that the younger Schofield children would dare approach Tatlock. After what seems like an entire minute, Tatlock slowly turns away, and keeps walking. 

William’s children walk back dejectedly to the pub front. William carries on cleaning the windows as if he hadn’t been staring as well, and asks them in as casual tone as possible what they had said to Mr Tatlock.

“Don’t be angry,” Tommy says sheepishly. “I had invited him for dinner.” 

“Oh! What did he say?”

“He didn’t say anything,” Tommy says. “Just stared at us and walked away.” He bites his lip. “D’you think I upset him?” 

“I don’t know,” William says. He watches Tatlock’s retreating back turn the corner and disappear--into another pub. “No. I think, Tommy, you are the least of his worries.” 

Tommy mulls on this a little.

“Is it all right if we ask him again?” he says. “Later?” 

William hesitates. 

“I’ll ask with you, next time,” he says. 

There is no next time. George Tatlock is found dead along the River Thames not long after, drunk and drowned. Whether or not he had passed out accidentally into the waters, or had jumped, is no longer relevant. William, and all the others who had fought in France, knows that it is still the war that killed him. 

Tatlock’s wife buries him in the churchyard, and the Schofields are in attendance of his funeral. William feels a numbness that he cannot name, and Eloise weeps silently beside him. She tries to explain to Tommy that Tatlock had been very ill, and some wounds from the war never heal. Tommy stares at the casket being lowered to the ground, and William grips tightly on his hand. 

William was never good friends with Tatlock, not even good acquaintances, but he finds himself in his own pub late at night, drinking. He does not find it hard to imagine what Tatlock was thinking and feeling all these years that culminated into a modest headstone by the church. Whether or not he drowned himself, William does not find it hard to understand why Tatlock would be willing to. The realisation numbs him. Tatlock may no longer have surviving children, but he had a wife that he once loved, and family who prays for him still, and he had walked willingly towards death. What would stop William from doing the same one day, if everything becomes too much? 

Little footsteps padded down the stairs from the flat. Tommy pulls out a bar stool and sits next to his father, clad in his pyjamas. He doesn’t say anything to William, which William appreciates as he takes in his drink. He simply stares at the counter, sitting in William’s presence, until all of a sudden he buries his face into William’s arm, clutching tight to his sleeve.

“Don’t go,” he says, his voice muffled. “Papa, please don’t go.” 

William doesn’t know what to say. His heart sinks, and for some reason the only thing he can think to say to his son is an apology. I’m sorry, love. I don’t know. I just don’t know.

He draws Tommy close, lets his son tuck his head under William’s chin. He feels his son breathe against his chest, feels his son listen to his heartbeat. He doesn’t want to let go and is afraid that one day he might. 

God, he prays, help me. Help this be enough. Help me. 

He is desperate for clarity, for the weight to be lifted from his shoulders, for joy to flood him boundlessly. He waits, and breathes, and breathes, and breathes, and keeps breathing, so he takes Tommy back upstairs to tuck him into bed, and leaves his drink unfinished on the counter. 

-

He was running across the trenches, but his legs would not move. 

Colonel McKenzie was only three hundred metres away. William could see the dugout, see the last stretch of his race, and yet no matter how hard he tried his legs would not lift from the ground. His feet were like stones, dragging behind him as he tried to push himself to sprint. The men were going over the top in only twenty seconds, and he could not stop the battle.

“Colonel McKenzie!” he screamed. “Colonel, wait!” 

A whistle blew, and the men clambered over the edge.

“Stop!” Bullets spat in their direction. Lines of men fell to the ground. William pumped his arms, forced his knees. They wouldn’t lift any higher than a centimetre. “Stop! COLONEL MCKENZIE!” 

He had made it only ten metres at most. Another whistle blew, and the second wave of men rushed forward. They were immediately slaughtered. William could feel their bodies under his feet. 

“Sco, Sco!” 

William looked behind him. He swore that it was Blake’s voice. He didn’t know how he remembered it anymore, but he simply knew that it was. He tried to find him in the mess of people rushing towards their deaths, even though in his dream mind he knew that Blake was dead. 

“Blake?” William called out. “Where are you?” 

“Sco!” 

He couldn’t see him. He needed to keep going. He had three hundred metres left to go. But he wanted to see Blake again so badly. 

“Blake, I’m here!” he said. He tried to wave his arms, but couldn’t lift them higher than his shoulder. He had both hands in this dream. Do you see me? I’ll come for you, we’ll go together. Where are you?”

“Sco, you need to _go_!” 

Another whistle. Another wave. William shook his head frantically. 

“Where are you?” he said. “I’ll help you. Blake--”

“Don’t stop!” Blake cried out. “They need you, don’t stop!” 

“I won’t leave you behind again,” William said. He pushed people aside, bodies aside, looking for his friend. “I won’t, I won’t--”

“It’s _okay_ , Sco,” Blake said over the noise. “Leave it alone. I don’t need it anymore. Find Colonel McKenzie and it’ll be over.” 

William knew that the next person he pushed aside would reveal Blake. He knew it in his nerves, that his friend was just within reach. Just as he pushed through the crowd, he wakes. 

He wakes as if it is routine, and realises how much his body aches. His back is tired, his knuckles are tender, and he doesn’t think he can run much faster than his dream self could even without the nightmarish quality. The war ended over sixteen years ago, and although he tastes the mud in his mouth still, he is forty now, and doesn’t understand why or how he got here. 

William pushes himself out of bed. He does not bother checking the time. Eloise continues sleeping, and doesn’t stir when he pulls on a night robe and closes the bedroom door behind him. He doesn’t know where to go. He keeps thinking to himself, _I want to go home, I want to go home_ , like he used to when he was in his twenties and shivering in the cold, but he is home now. 

The light in the living room is still on. He follows the orangeish light and stops at the doorway. Ginnie and Tommy are fast asleep in the living room--Ginnie curled up on the sofa and Tommy on the rug. They are huddled near the radio, after staying up late to finish a gripping drama. Edith is sitting on the rocking chair under the lamp, some other boys’ university notebooks spread out over her lap as she studies. She looks up when William comes into the room. 

“Morning, Dad,” she whispers. 

“Bit late for studying, isn’t it?” he says. “No, no need,” he adds when she stands up to offer him the chair. “I’d like to stretch my legs a bit.” 

Edith nods and returns to her studies. She is twenty now, and plans to move to London on her own to pursue a city life and schooling. He is immensely proud of her and intensely sad, because he doesn’t want her to be far. It’s only a day’s train ride, she assures him as she applies to universities and rings up cousins on Eloise’s side to find her a place to stay. You can visit me, and I can take you round the city all you like. 

He sits down on the edge of the sofa, at Ginnie’s feet. Ginnie is eighteen, and Tommy is thirteen. They are too big for William to carry their sleeping selves to bed now. They say that time’s arrow only moves forward, but to William, the past and the present and the future are interwoven, bound irrevocably together like a shawl that wraps around him. 

Tommy stirs at their feet. He drags the back of his hand over his eyes and blinks up at William before smiling.

“Hi, Dad,” he says. 

He reaches out a hand to William. William takes it and helps him sit up. Tommy is growing into William’s slim cheekbones, but he still looks more like his mother. 

“What time is it?” he asks. 

William checks his wristwatch.

“Four in the morning,” he says. “How long were you all staying up listening to that programme?” 

“Aw,” says Tommy, “you don’t need to know that.” 

Edith smirks behind her notebook. 

“What was it about?” says William.

“It’s about this novelist,” Tommy says, “who keeps getting a stranger call on him in the middle of the night, and the stranger seems very familiar--in fact, he seems like one of the characters that the novelist is writing in his story, but that character is a _murderer_.” He lowers his voice. “Did you hear Ginnie scream?”

“I didn’t _scream_ ,” Ginnie grumbles.

“I’m waking everyone up now, aren’t I?” says William.

Ginnie sleepily turns around on the sofa so that her head leans against William’s shoulder instead. 

“Tommy here kept insisting that the bloke wasn’t a murderer,” Ginnie says. “Don’t judge him, you said. Maybe he just needs help, you said. The look on your face when you found out you were wrong.” 

“That’s rich coming from you, who _screamed_ ," says Tommy. 

“I said I didn’t scream,” she says with a yawn. “I _gasped_.” 

“No, you screamed,” Tommy says. “You went _ah_!” 

“If I screamed, Mum and Dad would have woken up.”

“Dad’s awake now, isn’t he?” Edith says slyly.

“I didn’t wake him up!” Ginnie says. She lifts her head to frown at William. “Did I?” 

William shakes his head. 

“I woke up from a dream,” he says.

“Was it a bad dream?” Tommy says.

William hesitates. He puts his arm around Ginnie’s shoulders and gives it a small squeeze. 

“I don’t know,” he says honestly. 

“What was it about?” Tommy says. 

Ginnie aims a kick at Tommy, who grumbles. William tuts at her, but he hesitates to answer. His children look at him expectantly, and he realises that none of them have heard of Tommy’s namesake. His heart skips a beat. He doesn’t know if he is ready for that yet. 

Sco, Blake’s voice says softly. _Go_.

“I dreamed about my friend from the war,” William says.

He hasn’t talked much about the war to anyone, not even to his wife. What good would it do to worry them, when they can do nothing about it? He has crawled out of the trenches and yet he still finds himself drowning in the mud of it, nearly two decades later. His family should be untouched by it, and yet they are his entire life now, and there are days where he feels like he is nothing else but the war. 

“Who were they?” asks Edith, who understands before William even has to say it. 

William draws in a deep breath. 

“His name was Tom Blake,” he says. 

Tommy doesn’t move or blink. His lips part in surprise, and William sees understanding settle on his face. 

“What was he like?” he asks in a hushed voice. 

William opens his mouth to answer, and realises he can’t make a noise. Realises that he is beginning to cry. As if acknowledging Thomas Blake aloud has broken the dam that has held the war back all this time, his resolve shakes and breaks. 

He feels Ginnie stand up from the sofa, and hears Edith get out of the rocking chair. He feels Tommy’s hand on his knee, patient and steady. Edith presses a kiss on his stubbly cheek and takes his hand. Ginnie has gone to the kitchen to make a cup of tea with a splash of milk and honey, exactly how he likes it. 

When the fog finally clears, he can find the words.

“He saved my life,” he says. “And he used to grow cherry trees. Let me tell you about him.” 

And then, while the sun drowsily rises, they listen. 

-

I’m sorry, Blake, William thinks. I’m sorry. Thank you. Thank you so much. I’m sorry. We’ll be okay. I’ll be okay. 

-

It is springtime, and there is a corner cleared out in the pub. The children have made a presentation to William of why it would be beneficial to business and general morale of the city if the Lady of the Lake had a Rock-Ola jukebox. William had conceded, provided that no customer pranks the pub and plays a single song eleven times for the hell of it. 

The regular patrons, particularly the younger ones, are delighted. The older crew roll their eyes and shake their heads, but it is either that or withstand some of old man Peterson’s drunk singing, so they moan at a minimum. 

“Ginnie,” says William on the afternoon that the jukebox is supposed to come in. “Go and make sure that Tommy and Wheeler’s son haven’t gotten themselves conveniently sidetrack on their way.” 

“I’ll bet ten crowns that it’s Benjamin’s fault,” Ginnie says ruthlessly, but she hangs up her apron and runs out the door to find the boys, who ought to be transporting the jukebox from the post. William smiles wryly and continues his work. It is mid-afternoon on a Saturday, and already bustling at the pub. More people come and go, visitors from out of town passing by on their way to London or visiting old friends and relatives. Time has made it easier to connect, or revisit the past, in some ways. 

He hears the door open and close as more guests mill through, and he lifts his head to greet them as usual before his heart skips a beat. 

You’ll recognise him, Blake had said many, many years ago. He looks like me, but a bit older. 

“Lieutenant Blake?” William says. “Joseph?”

The past stands before him, right here in the Lady of the Lake, dressed as the present. Joseph Blake has lines on his forehead and grey in his hair now, but William recognises him in an instant. He looks less like his younger--now much younger--brother now, but William is struck by how their expressions are the same, the way that Joseph’s eyes widen in shock the same way Blake’s used to, jaw hanging mutely as he tries to come up with coherent things to say. This must be what Blake might have looked like, if he was given the chance. 

“I’ll be damned,” Joseph says. “Schofield, isn’t it? Will--Will Schofield?” 

“Yes, sir,” William says, even though they are both in their forties, and haven’t worn a uniform in a long time. 

Joseph blinks once, twice before he crosses to the bar, at the same time Will hurries around it. They clasp each other’s hand--both of them more lined and less calloused than before. 

“By God,” says Joseph. “If I had known--I had no idea--you haven’t changed a bit, have you, Schofield?”

“I’m missing a hand,” William deadpans. 

Joseph looks down abruptly at William’s left arm, and the look of mortification is enough to make William laugh.

“What are you doing here?” he says. “How is your mother? Is she well?” 

Joseph’s face softens. He looks very much like his brother when he does that. 

“She’s still around,” he says. “She’s been ill, lately. But she is still with us.” He sees the unasked question on William’s face. “She reads all of your letters, Schofield. I know she does. But she hasn’t had the courage to write back. But she does read them, and she keeps them in a box.” 

“She doesn’t have to if she doesn’t want to,” William says. “I couldn’t help it. I wanted--I don’t know. I thought about what I would want if one of my children--well, I am glad to hear about her.” 

Joseph nods; he holds himself in a way that seems like he has so much to say, but is at a loss of words. He clears his throat and tries again.

“I’m passing through to London,” he says. “My daughter and her husband live there now.”

“My daughter Edith is there as well,” William says. Nothing is stopping them, and yet William feels like there is not enough time in the world. “How long are you in town for?” 

Before Joseph can answer, the door to the pub slams open. Tommy and the Wheeler boy are hefting a large box together while Ginnie holds the door, barking at them. 

“Not so fast, Ben, or you’ll drop the whole thing!” she says. “Set it there--no, right here, are you blind?--There we are. Where’s your crowbar, Ben, we need to free this old thing!” 

“I can’t stand your sister, Schofield,” Ben mutters to Tommy, who snorts.

“Can’t you?” he says. “And I thought you were made of stronger stuff.”

“Awful,” Benjamin says, before he runs out to find a crowbar to pry open the box. Tommy and Ginnie flit about the box, chattering excitedly about the music they hope would be in it. 

“Hold on a minute,” William calls out to them. Tommy and Ginnie turn to their father, their faces flushed with excitement. “Come on over here, I want to introduce you to someone.” 

Tommy and Ginnie exchange a curious glance before approaching their father. Tommy is sixteen and Ginnie is twenty-one, and they grow more and more into miracles each day. 

“This is Joseph Blake,” William says. “Introduce yourselves, please.” 

Tommy’s eyes widen, connecting the dots immediately. Ginnie, less subtle, takes a step back in surprise. Judging by the look on Joseph’s face, he isn’t expecting such a response. 

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Joseph says. 

“I’m Virginia,” Ginnie says. She keeps looking back between Joseph and William, gobsmacked. “Pleasure is mine.” 

She elbows Tommy, who jumps. He meets Joseph’s eyes, and shyness softens his voice.

“I’m Tommy, sir,” he says. 

Joseph stills. Tommy looks nervously at his father, but William holds the silence. He looks back to Joseph and offers a smile. Joseph takes a moment to find himself again, and when he looks at Tommy there is an immeasurable tenderness in his eyes.

“I’m very glad to meet you both,” he says. He reaches his hand out to greet them properly. Tommy looks starstruck. “And to have found your father. He saved my life, you know.” 

Tommy and Ginnie’s heads snap towards William’s direction. William sheepishly wipes the counter with a rag.

“You saved his life?” Tommy says.

“He saved the lives of sixteen hundred men,” says Joseph. “I wouldn’t be standing here if it weren’t for him.” 

“How?” Ginnie said. “When? What? _Eh_?” 

William is never gladder than when Benjamin rushes back into the pub with a crowbar. Ginnie glares at the poor boy as if he has interrupted on purpose. Tommy looks at William--not with awe, because that fact hasn’t changed his father in his eyes, but with deep, hushed gratitude that William is still here, despite it all. 

“Come on, you two!” Benjamin says, waving his crowbar.

“In a minute!” Ginnie hollers over her shoulder. 

“I won’t keep you from your gift,” Joseph says. “I’m sure it’s far more exciting than an old man.” 

“But--” 

“Go on, you two,” William says. “This jukebox wasn’t cheap, it needs to earn back its worth immediately.” 

They oblige, but not without Tommy casting another curiously longing glance back at Joseph before they help Benjamin open the crate. Left to themselves, William’s cheeks warm with self-consciousness.

“I had meant to ask your mother first,” he says. “In case she would rather--in case _you_ would rather have the name for yourself.” 

“I have daughters,” says Joseph. His eyes are wet. “What’s he like, Tommy?” 

What a strange place for his heart to be, in the one moment where two loves intersect for the first and last time. 

“He’s nowhere near as chatty as Blake,” says William. 

Joseph laughs, wiping his eyes with his hand.

“Not many people are,” he says. 

“He loves reading,” William says. “He’s such a peacekeeper. He worries for other people a lot. He has a bit of a temper that you wouldn’t expect. He’s not very much like Blake at all,” he adds. “Except his heart is generous, like Blake’s. It’s foolish and full, like his. But he’s not Blake.” 

“No,” Joseph says. They don’t say it, but neither of them want Tommy to be. “He’s not. He seems like a wonderful, lovely boy.” 

The children finally break open the crate to reveal a shiny, hefty jukebox in the midst of straw cushioning. Ginnie shrieks with delight, causing a couple patrons to slosh beer down their fronts. 

“And she seems absolutely marvellous,” Joseph says.

William cracks a grin. Tommy plugs in the jukebox and pushes a coin into the slot. Ginnie jabs at the buttons and they hover around the machine, waiting with bated breath. 

“Schofield,” Joseph says, as Ginnie and Tommy danced together to the music--Ginnie flailing her arms about and Tommy swaying in a one-two step, one-two. “I’m very glad to see you again.” 

William smiles. He is stricken with the understanding that a weight is rising from his chest, one that he hasn't realised he has been holding onto for so long. The weight of surviving alone. Not all at once, but piece by piece, like he is slowly being built back together. He is glad to be here. He is glad to be back. 

“Well, you’re here for a drink first and foremost, aren’t you?” he says. “What can I get you?” 

-

On September of 1939, Great Britain declares war once more on Germany. And Tommy is eighteen years old. 

The first few weeks leave Britain uneasy, until the conscription comes all at once. A conscription letter to Thomas Blake Schofield arrives in their mail slot. He does not shudder when he opens it, does not pale as he reads its content. He does, however, walk with Ginnie along the River Thames like they used to. They talk about dwarves and dragons as if nothing has changed, and talk about Hobbits who return home at the end of a long journey. They wade by the riverside until the autumn night, and when Eloise calls for them to come back, Tommy says, just five more minutes. Please, we’ll be right back. 

Tommy passes all health inspections with flying colours, and is given a uniform and a train ticket. He is a young man now, all childish roundness has smoothed down to hollow, elegant angles. Crowds do not make him tremble anymore, but he is still shy to speak first. He is nearly as tall as William, but not quite. He hasn’t finished growing. 

The night before Tommy has to leave, William and Eloise stay up all night. She holds down the face of the watch as he pries off the dirty glass, and she screws in the tiny pieces while he holds them in place. They replace the fraying strap with a clean, leather one, and by the time they finish the face of the watch reads one in the morning. Eloise holds the watch to her chest and cries. She had thought that she would be prepared for this, but sending a husband to war is different from sending a child. 

William quietly makes his way to Tommy’s bedroom. He can hear whispering behind the girls’ bedroom door; Edith had returned from London for the weekend to see Tommy off. She works as a typist for the war cabinet now, and Ginnie talks about wanting to volunteer as a nurse. Twenty-one years after the end of his war, William now has to experience what it is like to be the one left behind. 

There is light under Tommy’s door, so William knocks. Tommy says, come in, and he pushes open the door. He hasn’t finished packing, but at least his paperwork is folded up in an envelope and all in order. Tommy is bent over his desk, scribbling in a journal. He closes it the moment William walks in. 

“Can’t sleep,” Tommy says with an apologetic smile. “Hopefully there will be some time for shut-eye on the train.” 

William nods, mute. Tommy slips the journal in the desk drawer and sets down his pen. William sits down on the edge of Tommy’s bed. 

He sets his pack on the small bookshelf by his desk, the very same that William and Eloise had made for him when he was a child. The paint is chipping away, and the shelf is sagging with accumulation of books wedged in them, but it still holds strong. 

“I don’t suppose I ought to take any of these with me,” Tommy says with a mortified laugh, running his finger over the spines. 

“Tell me which one you’re hankering for, and I’ll tear out the pages and send it to you weekly,” William says.

“Don’t you dare,” Tommy says. 

He grins when William laughs.

“I’ll write to you,” Tommy promises. “Every moment I can.” 

“If it is too hard, don’t,” William says. “You can let me know if it is.” 

“All right, Dad,” Tommy says. “I will.” 

“Make sure you have extra socks with you. I don’t know where you’ll be going.” 

“I will.” 

“Don’t try to be a hero,” William says. His voice wavers. “Don’t think about stupid medals and fancy ribbons. Just come back home, Tommy. Come back to us.” 

Tommy gets out of his desk chair and sits next to William. He puts a hand on his father’s knee.

“I will,” he says. 

William puts a clumsy hand on top of Tommy’s. He knows his son too well, and that he has hardly changed. He would still have pity on his enemies, and try to give them the benefit of the doubt. He will make a whole mess out of the war, inviting the Germans over for dinner and lending books for them to read. That is William’s son, and he trusts him to be just that. 

He takes his wristwatch and lays it across Tommy’s wrist. 

“Help me with this,” he murmurs. 

Tommy looks up to William, speechless, but William shakes his head. No time for that. So Tommy holds the watch in place as William tightens the strap around his wrist. Tommy’s wrist is smaller than William’s. He has to fit the needle through the very last hole to keep it from slipping around. 

“Does it fit all right?” William says.

“Yes,” Tommy says, breathless. “Thank you.” 

He looks up to his father and offers him a pensive smile. Then, he wraps his arms around his father. William’s heart leaps into his throat, and he sinks into his son’s embrace. 

“Don’t worry, Dad,” Tommy says. His arms tighten around William. “I’m coming back. Wait for me, okay?” 

William closes his eyes. He does not trust his son’s words, nor does he dismiss them. Instead, he hopes, and hopes, and hopes, and that is enough. 

“I’ll be here when you come back,” William promises. “I’ll be right here.” 


End file.
